Barnacle Love

by Anthony De Sa

  Once off the Grand Banks, each man was assigned his own wooden dory that dangled precariously off the side of the mother ship. These fourteen-foot vessels would be their homes through the long days of fishing. The thrashing cod were the only guests invited on board. At four o’clock in the morning the men were lowered into the black ocean, to push off immediately from the vessel—once one hit water, a wave could be fatal, crashing the dory into the side of the Argus, destroying the craft and killing the man. For some of these old dorymen it was their fortieth voyage. Francisco Battista Rego was the oldest. Inscrutable, at sixty-two he had visited the Grand Banks forty-three times, so often in fact he said that he had forgotten what a summer in his native Terceira was like. The seas called out to him, and for months he left his wife and children. For six months of the year—from May to October—these men were his family, a family he had come to know more intimately than his own.

  One night, as the men slept up against each other so as to keep warm, Francisco Golfinho, the dolphin, snuggled up to Manuel Boneco.

  “I’ll watch over you,” Golfinho whispered.

  He reached over and grabbed Manuel’s hand, pulled him closer.

  “Don’t panic, show no fear—the panicked are dead.”

  Manuel could see the man’s stubby fingers, made rounder by his missing fingernails, encase his own smallish hand—as a father’s would his son’s. He thought of his own father and was comforted by Francisco’s protective words that came when Manuel felt loneliest, most vulnerable. Other men had busied themselves with writing letters to wives, mothers, children, or brothers—someone back home who needed to know they were alive and well. He could not write home, not with the way things had been left. Only shattered images remained. But the act of writing soothed him, so Manuel began to write letters also. They all began with “Dear Big Lips …” Then, in the cool pink of daybreak, he’d move up on deck and let shredded pieces of paper slip from his fingers like confetti.

  He was physically drained. Here they all were, hand-lining for cod from their dory boats all day, only to return to the ship at sundown to begin splitting, gutting, and salting the day’s catch. It was the brandy, the songs, and the old yarns repeated by tired, dizzy men that kept them alive. And every morning they would once again prepare to descend into the sea, push off from the Argus and venture far through the thick fog to drop their lines two or three hundred feet into the abyss.

  Manuel awaited the promise that the tedious months in their berths would be broken occasionally by a visit to St. John’s, when the ship would make a scheduled call to replenish supplies, make repairs to sails or engines, and provide shore leave. Other times there was a need to land injured men or just to seek some shelter from the storms that tore across the sheet of black water and tossed the White Fleet like toy boats. He had heard of how the fishermen became a prominent part of Newfoundland life. They visited the Fishermen’s Centre and window-shopped along Water and Duckworth streets with the bits of money they had to spend. They remembered their families back home, buying souvenirs: toys, stockings, perfume, toothpaste. At the post office, the men sent mail home or picked up parcels they had ordered the year before from the Eaton’s catalogue.

  One Saturday morning, word spread along the crowded bunks that the fleet would finally call into St. John’s before returning home. Manuel could scarcely contain his excitement. A blend of joy and confusion tumbled among the men. Some howled with pleasure as they mockingly groped each other like passionate lovers, or practiced their English out loud: broken words and phrases like how much? or you look beautiful today. Many went looking for comforts, a clean girl, and certain houses were glad to provide them.

  Manuel had dressed carefully and made his way to the deck. He held on to the smooth railing, leaned his torso over the open sea as if to breathe in churning air. Some of the men ran naked on the upper deck, drew up cold sea water and doused themselves, rubbed their goose-pimpled limbs and their stubbled necks with amber bars of glycerin soap. Manuel closed his eyes and then opened them again to catch the rhythmic beacon atop the outline of a distant shore. It was Cabo de Espera, the “cape of waiting,” as the Portuguese had named it. He had waited so long and it was only now that it had become so palpable. Manuel smiled.

  Many of the veteran fishermen seemed amused by the frenetic energy that consumed the younger men. Manuel couldn’t help but think they were recalling a time when they would have been swept into the madness. Now, they appeared content to save their money and make a bit more by sitting on the piers, mending sails or repairing the long lines of hooks as they smoked and drank Portuguese wine. Many of the residents bought things from the fishermen, indulgences like cigarettes and wine. Some men had even developed relationships with families in St. John’s.

  Before coming up on deck Manuel had allowed himself to feel a moment of guilt for abandoning his mother’s dream. He had carefully made his bed, the way he had been taught. He was afraid, and yet he knew it was the only way in which he could construct a future, for him and for them.

  The Argus’s hull kissed the pier’s concrete side. Manuel scanned the enormous wharves, looked up toward the city of St. John’s as the ship’s horn blew and a group of pigeons lighted and flew across his view like a net cast against the open sea.

  He stepped onto the gangway and slowly descended. The morning sun bathed the regular facades of the port buildings, with their pitched roofs and masonry walls, that stood along the road. With every step his eyes caught the white or yellow gabled trim, the paved roads and flash of glass. Angular shadows that splayed across sidewalks. He looked up to the teetering city built in tiers, splattered with green, vermilion, and white clapboard houses. It was so different from the whitewashed world he came from, and the moment his feet touched solid ground he knew that this place was his promised land.

  It wasn’t difficult to find his way around. Manuel simply followed the throngs of fishermen as he dodged the cars and trucks that sputtered past on both sides of the narrow road. His first stop was at the Arcade store, where a pile of white shoes greeted him. He was told that the locals called these Portuguese sneakers, something even the poorest of fishermen could afford. Manuel was stunned by the sheer amounts of clothing and food; shelves stocked all the way to the edge, some things piled two or three high. The weight on these shelves made their centers sag close to the worn wooden floors. He didn’t know where to begin.

  “Can I help you?”

  Manuel turned to meet an attractive woman with a slight overbite that made her upper lip look full when her mouth was closed. She was slightly older than Manuel, twenty-five or so, he thought. She did not look at him, simply looked down, held her thin fingers clasped in front of her, and swung her body from side to side.

  “Thank you,” Manuel managed to say.

  He crouched to look up into her eyes. His inquisitive gesture made her smile. Her eyebrows were thin and penciled. Her mossy green eyes were set wide apart, made wider by the way her hair was pulled into a ponytail.

  “Is that the size you want?” she asked, pointing at the shoes he held tucked under his arm.

  “Irmão. Irmão.”

  “Mary!” she called out. She then lowered her voice when she saw him twitch. “Mary, he’s talkin’ in Portuguese. Don’t know what I’m saying,” she added.

  “Brother. For my brother,” came out of his mouth, as if in answer.

  “That’s better,” she said. “Now what size is your brother? What size, though?”

  He looked down at her gold name tag: Linda. He pointed to her name and mouthed the word in a nervous stutter. When she smiled he continued, “Is mean beautiful in Portuguese.” Her face flushed red and her head tilted to the side.

  “Anything else I can help you with?”

  Linda had wrapped the gifts he had purchased in their own separate packets: shoes for his brothers and slips and stockings for his sisters—he smiled to himself remembering the embarrassing gestures made to Linda in his attempt to des
cribe what he wanted. For his mother he had found a tortoiseshell hair comb, encrusted with small crystals along its scalloped edge. He knew that she would think it was too dear for her to wear, but he wanted her to have something nice. Manuel had insisted that Linda clearly write the names of his siblings on their respective packets. He couldn’t help but notice her relief when he used the word sister as she scrawled Albina and Candida on the stiff brown parchment. Everything needed to be wrapped well, for the packets would be sent home by mail. Linda directed him to the post office.

  Once relieved of his parcels, Manuel was guided by a couple of other Portuguese fishermen to where Mateus lived, a man known to provide the comforts of home to seafaring men. He did not enter the home located just below the towering gloom of the Basilica of St. John the Baptist. He had been avoiding the church ever since he landed. Manuel simply stood outside Mateus’s house and bathed in the familiar sounds of the accordion and trill voices of amateur fadistas. He knew that here he would find wine and food but most importantly, he knew inside was the man who had lived in St. John’s since he was a boy. The man had left Portugal hidden in the dory of the ship, in search of his father. The man would help Manuel.

  Manuel spent the rest of his day weaving in and out of shops, dizzied by the display of things to buy: coffee, sugar, and vegetables he had never seen. He saw women smoking casually as they moved along the hills that undulated upward to the church. There were men in suits and hats who walked along with purpose and importance. They angled their shoulders so as not to hit the narrow bay windows that jutted every so often into the crowded sidewalks. Other men lumbered along the roads in coveralls or thigh-high rubber boots, pushing carts or lugging crates over their shoulders. Manuel saw a Chinese man sorting through vegetables and felt compelled to follow him up a narrow series of steps, past a war statue, up to yet another layer of the city to be explored. Manuel looked up at a large sign with a panda bear sipping from a bowl. He opened the door and heard the tinkling of chimes. Manuel twirled the noodles on his fork—he wasn’t quite sure what the sticks that lay next to his plate were for—and forced the swirling mounds of sweetly covered noodles and scored lengths of squid into his mouth.

  After his meal he continued to walk through the streets of the city. He didn’t worry about getting lost. From almost any point in St. John’s he could look out toward the Narrows and into the sea. He could then let his eyes work their way back to the wharf, where he could see the White Fleet’s forest of masts and sails. He could see the long lengths of rope and chain that held the ships firmly against the dock. Some ropes had been covered in long underwear and plaid flannel shirts that flapped in the warm air. He could see the decks of the ships covered with the dory sails, allowed to dry in the waning summer sun.

  Tired, Manuel found a spot in a park at the top of the hill. He sat under the shade of a tree, surrounded by the magnificent homes where all the rich, fine men lived, he assumed.

  Manuel recognized a few of the Portuguese fishermen playing soccer in their bare feet. Some young boys played with them. Soon there were people gathering to sit on benches or sprawl on checked blankets. They watched the game played in the meadow near the bandstand as the dark-skinned Portuguese players dazzled everyone with their footwork. The grunting only drew louder claps at the friendly sportsmanship. Manuel took off his shoes and socks in the comfort of sounds and sights familiar but new. He flicked the cool blades of grass between his toes. A sailor began playing his accordion—some lilting Portuguese waltzes—under the roof of the bandstand. With the music dancing in his head, Manuel turned and looked out to the sparkling, still water in the harbor. Life in this new land is determined by being so close to the ocean, he thought. It was as if the cliff he had dangled his feet from all his life was the same rock and mineral that formed along the shores of this land. The drift may have occurred millions of years before but there was sameness, an intimate sense of belonging that closed the chasm of ocean between here and his home—between all things left behind and his future.

  Manuel’s eyes had grown heavy and he had fallen asleep. His eyes opened slightly at the sound of the first gust of foghorns blowing. Manuel drew his knees close to his chest and wrapped his arms around his legs. The park now lay empty in front of him. He could see sails crawling up the masts and the men filing in thin lines like ants, winding their way down the streets toward the docks.

  The time spent on land had been short. The men boarded the ship wearily, their minds drunk with stories just waiting to be told. There were only a few days left before the Argus and other ships would turn their noses home, and underneath the layer of fatigue were the fired spirits of men who knew they would be with their real families soon. But the promise of the new land would not be erased from Manuel’s mind. He closed his eyes in the warm knowledge he would stay.

  The foghorns blared again.

  The wind had picked up in the dusk and Manuel reached for his father’s sweater, which he had knotted around his waist. He pulled it over his head. With a desperate hope, he thrust his hand up under his sweater and patted his chest. His mind’s veil lifted and he pictured his father’s gold crucifix in its foil packet pressed under the center of his mattress. There was no hesitation as he clambered down the steep hills toward the wharf. There were times when he thought he would stumble down the sloping streets, that his burning thighs wouldn’t be able to stop the momentum building with every leap. He sprung onto the ramp, pushed himself through the thick clumps of returning men. Manuel’s boots clanged against the iron mesh gangway, the metallic sound reverberating in his panicked head. He reached the mouth of the doorway, threw himself down its gullet in a single bound, felt the walls like a blind man, pupils ill-adjusted to the gloom as he charged into an open room strewn with narrow rows of rotting bunks. He flipped over his mattress and grabbed at the tinfoil envelope. He unfolded the flaps and drew out the twirling cross.

  The foghorns blew again, deep and long.

  Manuel leapt up the stairs in a fluid motion, the necklace now secured beneath his father’s sweater. As he came up on deck, Manuel’s eyes met Francisco Golfinho’s clean-shaven face and tender stare. Manuel looked over Francisco’s shoulder to the city of St. John’s. He pushed up against Francisco, tried to wedge himself between some men who sang in a drunken stupor at what had been the gangway’s opening. The ropes and chains had been drawn and the ship had pushed away from the dock. He looked down at the widening gap of black water. He looked toward the colors all muted and hazy in the early moon’s light. Francisco Golfinho leaned in and placed his hand on Manuel’s shoulder. Manuel could smell the traces of aftershave and bacon fat mingling on Francisco’s skin.

  “Look at it,” Manuel whispered. His eyes scanned the skyline. “It’s like I want to … touch it, hold on to it.”

  “It’s time to find our way back home.” Francisco slapped Manuel’s shoulder twice. Manuel thought of his mother. Over the months her face had softened in his mind. He thought of all the ways in which his siblings had suffered so much, had loved him unconditionally because they believed in their mother’s fiction.

  Francisco Golfinho moved his hand to the small of Manuel’s back and Manuel reluctantly turned from the city. They were both caught by a mob of reveling men and Manuel staggered, then fell onto the ship’s deck, where he choked on his disappointment, swallowed the snot in the back of his throat and wept.

  It would be the final day of fishing before returning home. Manuel pushed off from the Argus, as he had done so many times before. But on this day he set the oars into the oarlocks and rowed out into the ocean’s vastness with a renewed sense of vitality; he had seen a part of the world that seemed boundless and felt he must be part of it. With these thoughts swimming in his mind he drifted for hours in the dense fog. He could hear the voices of the other men singing as they fished, but no vision could pierce the wall of white mist. He tried to row in a certain direction but then realized there was no direction, no bearing.

  The
long days passed. Alone on his dory, Manuel gnawed at the bluish-white flesh of the cod he’d caught. Taste had abandoned him now and all that remained was his fear. During the day the sun pounded his head as he lay rocking on the dory’s bottom. To cool his mind, Manuel remembered himself as a boy, diving into the waters every morning, burlap sac and a forged trident in hand. He would make his way to what he called the clam stone, a large rock formed by lava that flowed toward the shore, only to bubble into a solid black form millions of years ago. He would step onto its hollowed smoothness worn by sand, sea, and time. Manuel would pick at all the bounty trapped at low tide—God’s gift. There was always the initial stab when he dove into the ocean. But then his eyes would adjust to the wonderful world of the green waters. He loved the feeling of his hair being free, individual strands swarming around his head. The sense of control: holding his breath till his lungs burned, kicking his way to the sun-drenched surface before taking in another deep breath and going under again. He would spear only what was necessary, only what they could eat that day. But before he left he would always mangle one of the smaller fish he had caught and make his way to the rocky bottom, dive down along the drop wall and gently offer his hand and wiggle the bait, hoping the large black grouper would appear again. It never did.

  It was a cold night when Manuel lay down flat on the bottom of the dory, made the sign of the cross and looked up at the stars. He thought of the dream he had sacrificed and all the things he would never know. And then he prayed. The dory rocked, lifted and twirled, a mere twig caught by the force and power of the ocean. The storm was building and Manuel knew that it was only a matter of time.

  Frightened by the impenetrable dark, he breaks the surface, gasps and coughs up the crucifix. Salt water splashes against his face, forces his lips open, gushing in like an uninvited guest as he chokes on bile.